MOVIE REVIEW: Take a trip in the WABAC machine with 'Mr. Peabody & Sherman'

Friday

Mar 7, 2014 at 12:00 AMMar 12, 2014 at 5:21 PM

For years, creativity-challenged Hollywood has been pilfering 1960s TV shows for source material. the film – “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” has stayed loyal to its origins with its time travel escapades and penchant for horrific puns.

By Bob TremblayMetroWest Daily News

For years, creativity-challenged Hollywood has been pilfering 1960s TV shows for source material with the zeal of a hyperactive pickpocket. The results have been decidedly mixed, ranging from the successes like “Mission: Impossible” to disasters like “The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle.”

DreamWorks decided to give “Rocky” another shot, this time “borrowing” from one of the show’s segments, “Peabody’s Improbable History,” and wisely keeping it as animation and upgrading its look with 3-D technology. More importantly, the film – “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” – has stayed loyal to the TV show with its time travel escapades and penchant for horrific puns. Wait, is that redundant?

Young children likely won’t understand most of this word play, and characters like Sherman even make a point of that incomprehension by repeatedly saying, “I don’t get it.” What children will get is all the physical humor, some of it of the potty variety. Trojan soldiers plopping out of the Trojan horse’s backside, for example.

The film follows the exploits of Mr. Peabody (voice of Ty Burrell), a beagle with a bow tie and a genius IQ. As a puppy, he would rather read Plato than fetch a stick, making it hard for a family to warm up to him. As an adult, Mr. Peabody decides to adopt a boy, Sherman (voice of Max Charles), and takes him on trips through history in his WABAC machine. One journey takes them to the French Revolution where they meet a cake-loving Marie Antoinette (voice of Lauri Fraser). Tempers flare, and if you’re expecting a pun about people losing their heads, you’ll get it.

Anyway, when Sherman turns 7, he goes to school where he runs afoul of a blonde bully named Penny Peterson (voice of Ariel Winter), who mocks and embarrasses him by pointing out that his father is a dog. In anger, he bites Penny, which puts him in the cross hairs of Mrs. Grunion (voice of Allison Janney), a nasty school counselor who wants to take Sherman away from Mr. Peabody, believing he’s an unfit parent because he’s a dog.

Now anyone who wants to see a subtext here and substitute “gay” for “dog,” be my guest. Later on, when Sherman proudly proclaims he’s a dog, the implication might be hard to dismiss. What is undeniable is the film’s parent-child dynamic. Mr. Peabody may be a genius, but he could use a lesson in emotional expression.

One can argue that film should have stayed away from these issues and simply kept the jokes coming. The TV show certainly didn’t dabble in such heaviosity, Penny’s change of heart from pre-teen harridan to romantic interest comes off as forced, too.

The film is on more solid ground when it’s tweaking history. Who knew that a dog falling into a painting prompted Mona Lisa (voice of Lake Bell) to smile so Leonardo da Vinci (voice of Stanley Tucci) could finish his masterpiece?

More manic action breaks out when the space-time continuum goes a little wacky and famous people from the past end up in the present. Watch Robespierre get Tasered and Einstein (voice of Mel Brooks) struggle with the Rubik’s Cube?

Ultimately, director Rob Minkoff (“Lion King,” “Stuart Little”) and Craig Wright, making his screenplay debut, do right by the TV show. They even pay tribute to the man who swept up the petals at the beginning of each segment.

Full disclosure time: As I child growing up in the early 1960s, I loved “Peabody’s Improbable History.” I didn’t get most of the jokes either. Only when I was older and saw them in reruns did I appreciate its wry sense of humor. It’s not much of a stretch to see it as a precursor to “The Simpsons.” I still enjoyed Peabody and Sherman’s fractured forays into history. And who doesn’t like time travel anyway? You might not always be up to the minute, but you can always have seconds.